Abstract
The viability of Jeb Bush’s US presidential bid seemed to dissolve in February of 2016, when the sweater-clad candidate, who had just delivered an applause line, asked a gathering of New Hampshirites to “please clap.” The following afternoon, in nearby Lowell, Massachusetts, supporters of Donald Trump waited in long lines to hear their candidate speak. Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza (2016) wrote about the “MASSIVE amount of people” trying to get into the event, a fact that was particularly remarkable “considering that the high temperature in Lowell…was 29 degrees and Trump’s rally didn’t start until the evening.”
Do crowds predict winners? Do candidate appearances have their desired effect? Jay Wendland’s Campaigns That Matter: The Importance of Campaign Visits in Presidential Nominating Contests argues that campaign events really can make a difference. The book contributes new insights to scholarship dealing with the impact of campaign activities on electoral outcomes. Campaigns That Matter examines two under-researched topics: nominating contests and candidate visits. The key lesson of the book is that the effects of candidate appearances in nominating contests are contingent: “[I]n some cases, ads matter and visits do not,” Wendland writes, “and in other cases visits matter and ads do not” (p. 141).
Data assembled from public sources and coded for use in this study form the book’s empirical basis. Wendland models candidate appearances together with other plausible determinants (e.g., campaign spending and candidate momentum) for the 2008, 2012, and 2016 presidential nominating contests. The book aims “to demonstrate why visits are important and how they affect both mobilization and vote choice in presidential nominations” (p. 11).
Primary elections and caucus meetings offer a unique “testing ground” for the proposition that campaigns matter. A primary or caucus voter faces high decision costs. Partisan cues are unhelpful. The slate of candidates is always evolving. Voters who cast ballots in a caucus state may have to set aside an entire evening to make their decisions count. Candidates, for their part, must strategize a series of multicandidate elections that spans many states, each with its own rules. Early on, the purpose of a candidate’s visit might be to raise money (the so-called invisible primary); later, it might be to reach voters (the visible primary). At all times, the candidate wants to build momentum and manage resources in an effort to avoid being shuffled out of play.
Evidence presented in Campaigns That Matter indicates that candidate visits fit candidates’ strategic objectives. The key question is whether visits generate votes—getting supporters out to vote and persuading voters to cast their ballots the right way.
To measure effects on turnout, Wendland looks at the behavior of Christian Evangelicals (for Republican contests) and women and African Americans (for Democratic contests). He finds that campaign activities can help underdogs. In 2008, candidate visits may have boosted Mike Huckabee, not John McCain; in 2012, visits may have helped Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney. Wendland writes, “The effects of campaign activities on turnout—visits included—seems to be dependent on the status of the candidate…. It looks to be the longshot, or at least the lesser-known, candidates which inspire an increase in turnout” (p. 100). This finding makes sense: The underdogs have more room to grow and less occasion to reach people by other means. Then again, this dynamic went missing in 2016, perhaps due to the unique characteristics of the frontrunners: a Democratic woman running on the historic dimension of her candidacy and a Republican political novice running as a populist outsider (p. 140).
To gauge the effects of persuasion, Wendland analyzes state- and individual-level variables in a hierarchical linear model (HLM). The potential impact of candidate visits is tested alongside variables such as momentum, advertising, and home-state advantage, as well as issue positions and demographic attributes from participants in the American National Election Survey. Although results are mixed—candidate visits seem to vary in impact—the numbers for Trump are striking: “Trump spent a lot of time talking about the size of his rallies and how dedicated his voters were. It turns out that Trump was correct, with his visits increasing his support by almost 1,200 percent” (p. 130).
Like much of the literature on campaign effects, Campaigns That Matter can be too quick to infer causality. We might also have reservations about the specification of a key variable: campaign visits. “A campaign visit,” Wendland writes, “is an appearance by a candidate in a state” (p. 40). The confines of this definition might overlook some portion of the campaign effect by neglecting the value of visits near the state. Lowell, Massachusetts is a half-hour drive from Nashua, New Hampshire and most of the population of New Hampshire resides in the Boston, Massachusetts / Manchester, New Hampshire media market. Wendland argues that “delegates are not awarded on media market results” (p. 146). Nevertheless, political media planning follows the geography of audiences, which rarely trace state lines. Wendland is, therefore, right when he says “it may be useful to examine effects within media markets to ensure we have a better understanding of who saw which ads” (p. 146).
The book concludes with an appeal to continued research. A deepening of our appreciation of campaigns will require that we more clearly see what activities have effects and under what circumstances. Wendland takes a large step in that direction. His book demonstrates the usefulness of HLM in parsing individual-level vote choices when those choices are distributed across states and across time in a presidential nominating contest. In any event, Campaigns That Matter provides a strong foundation for future studies on the role of candidate visits and other campaign activities that might influence the outcome of US presidential elections.